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But if all this is true, what room is left for evil? Where
are we to place wrong-doing and sin?
How explain that in a world organized in good, the efficient
agents [human beings] behave unjustly, commit sin? And how comes
misery if neither sin nor injustice exists?
Again, if all our action is determined by a natural process, how
can the distinction be maintained between behaviour in accordance
with nature and behaviour in conflict with it?
And what becomes of blasphemy against the divine? The blasphemer
is made what he is: a dramatist has written a part insulting and
maligning himself and given it to an actor to play.
These considerations oblige us to state the Logos [the
Reason-Principle of the Universe] once again, and more clearly,
and to justify its nature.
This Reason-Principle, then- let us dare the definition in the
hope of conveying the truth- this Logos is not the Intellectual
Principle unmingled, not the Absolute Divine Intellect; nor does
it descend from the pure Soul alone; it is a dependent of that
Soul while, in a sense, it is a radiation from both those divine
Hypostases; the Intellectual Principle and the Soul- the Soul as
conditioned by the Intellectual Principle engender this Logos
which is a Life holding restfully a certain measure of Reason.
Now all life, even the least valuable, is an activity, and not a
blind activity like that of flame; even where there is not
sensation the activity of life is no mere haphazard play of
Movement: any object in which life is present, and object which
participates in Life, is at once enreasoned in the sense that the
activity peculiar to life is formative, shaping as it moves.
Life, then, aims at pattern as does the pantomimic dancer with
his set movements; the mime, in himself, represents life, and,
besides, his movements proceed in obedience to a pattern designed
to symbolize life.
Thus far to give us some idea of the nature of Life in general.
But this Reason-Principle which emanates from the complete unity,
divine Mind, and the complete unity Life [= Soul]- is neither a
uniate complete Life nor a uniate complete divine Mind, nor does
it give itself whole and all-including to its subject. [By an
imperfect communication] it sets up a conflict of part against
part: it produces imperfect things and so engenders and maintains
war and attack, and thus its unity can be that only of a
sum-total not of a thing undivided. At war with itself in the
parts which it now exhibits, it has the unity, or harmony, of a
drama torn with struggle. The drama, of course, brings the
conflicting elements to one final harmony, weaving the entire
story of the clashing characters into one thing; while in the
Logos the conflict of the divergent elements rises within the one
element, the Reason-Principle: the comparison therefore is rather
with a harmony emerging directly from the conflicting elements
themselves, and the question becomes what introduces clashing
elements among these Reason-Principles.
Now in the case of music, tones high and low are the product of
Reason-Principles which, by the fact that they are Principles of
harmony, meet in the unit of Harmony, the absolute Harmony, a
more comprehensive Principle, greater than they and including
them as its parts. Similarly in the Universe at large we find
contraries- white and black, hot and cold, winged and wingless,
footed and footless, reasoning and unreasoning- but all these
elements are members of one living body, their sum-total; the
Universe is a self-accordant entity, its members everywhere
clashing but the total being the manifestation of a
Reason-Principle. That one Reason-Principle, then, must be the
unification of conflicting Reason-Principles whose very
opposition is the support of its coherence and, almost, of its
Being.
And indeed, if it were not multiple, it could not be a Universal
Principle, it could not even be at all a Reason-Principle; in the
fact of its being a Reason-Principle is contained the fact of
interior difference. Now the maximum of difference is
contrariety; admitting that this differentiation exists and
creates, it will create difference in the greatest and not in the
least degree; in other words, the Reason-Principle, bringing
about differentiation to the uttermost degree, will of necessity
create contrarieties: it will be complete only by producing
itself not in merely diverse things but in contrary things.
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